Trumbo charts the rise, descent, and apotheosis of one of Hollywood's most prolific—and devious—scenarists.
The three of us, Jane Fonda, Dalton, and I, had walked out of the living room and were standing on his back porch, sort of hearing the garden noises, once in a while glancing at the stars that were tiny pinpoints of light in the warm black night. Jane and I were expounding passionately about the revolution to come when Dalton stopped us, and in our silence he very carefully said: 'Don't forget to be happy.' His voice has echoed in my mind for forty plus years. How many memories, how much disappointment, how much rejection and loss, how many regrets were held hostage in that phrase. I loved him truly in that moment and I so love him still.
Trumbo's literary skill and immeasurable wit and faithful idealism are highlighted throughout this penetrating biography. [... ] An essential biography and a great book that reflects the time and history in which it is set.
For those of us with obsessive curiosity about mid-20th century Hollywood [...] this is a great read.
Rarely does a biography so exquisitely balance an artist, his work, and his life as Larry Ceplair's Dalton Trumbo. I thought I knew Trumbo, but this book opened my eyes to the atmosphere of the Hollywood he worked in, the intricacies of the blacklist and the responses to it, and the richness and sometimes contradictory nature of a very complicated man. Ceplair's book had me as hooked as Trumbo's own movies.
" Dalton Trumbo: Blacklisted Hollywood Radical provides nearly everything you'd ever want to know about Trumbo as a person and screenwriter, as well as biting analysis on his time leading up to his arrest and imprisonment by HUAC, and how he shattered it." -- Journeys in Classic Film
"[A] good and surprising biography... Ceplair soars." -- The American Spectator
"[F]or those of us with obsessive curiosity about mid-20th century Hollywood [...] this isa great read." -- Noir City
"Ceplair and Trumbo's book is an exhaustive and precisely documented study of the work -- cinematic, literary and political -- of the screenwriter and Hollywood Ten member. It is an outstanding treatment of Trumbo's political struggle and of the obstacles he faced." -- Brian Neve, University of Bath
"Dalton Trumbo is a compellingly odd footnote in the tangled history of politics and show business in America." -- Wall Street Journal
"Rarely does a biography so exquisitely balance an artist, his work, and his life as Larry Ceplair's Dalton Trumbo. I thought I knew Trumbo, but this book opened my eyes to the atmosphere of the Hollywood he worked in, the intricacies of the blacklist and the responses to it, and the richness and sometimes contradictory nature of a very complicated man. Ceplair's book had me as hooked as Trumbo's own movies." -- Allison Anders, director and writer of Gas Food Lodging
"Similar to Hollywood, Dalton Trumbo was more than one dimensional and reflects the complexity of American radicalism." -- History News Network
"The three of us, Jane Fonda, Dalton, and I, had walked out of the living room and were standing on his back porch, sort of hearing the garden noises, once in a while glancing at the stars that were tiny pinpoints of light in the warm black night. Jane and I were expounding passionately about the revolution to come when Dalton stopped us, and in our silence he very carefully said: 'Don't forget to be happy.' His voice has echoed in my mind for forty plus years. How many memories, how much disappointment, how much rejection and loss, how many regrets were held hostage in that phrase. I loved him truly in that moment and I so love him still." -- Donald Sutherland
"This book can't help being continually fascinating because of its subject matter and his epic skill for armed literary combat." -- Film Comment
"This is a splendid book, a major accomplishment in the field of American film history and the history of the Left within popular culture. Ceplair and Trumbo examine a major victim of the Hollywood blacklist, with a depth and insight, not to mention exhaustive research, that is unprecedented in biography or autobiography." -- Paul Buhle, coauthor of Radical Hollywood: The Untold Story behind America's Favorite Movies
"Trumbo charts the rise, descent, and apotheosis of one of Hollywood's most prolific -- and devious -- scenarists." -- City Journal
"Trumbo's literary skill and immeasurable wit and faithful idealism are highlighted throughout this penetrating biography. [... ] [A]n essential biography and a great book that reflects the time and history in which it is set." -- Red Dirt Report
11/24/2014
One of the famous “Hollywood 10” blacklisted for an affiliation with the Communist Party, Trumbo (1905–1976) emerges from this well-rounded biography as a larger-than-life figure, not unlike the characters he scripted for the screen. Finishing a draft that was started but left incomplete by Trumbo’s son Christopher, who died in 2011, Ceplair (The Marxist and the Movies) begins with Trumbo’s early years as a movie reviewer for the Hollywood Spectator and a reader of scripts and books for Warner Brothers. By 1939, when his critically acclaimed anti-war novel Johnny Got His Gun was published, Trumbo had been recognized as one of Hollywood’s top screenwriters. Excerpts of his letters, notes, articles, speeches, and pamphlets throughout the book amply testify to his boundless energy and talent. Anti-Communist fervor led to Trumbo’s imprisonment in 1950 for contempt of Congress and an official absence from the screen for the next decade. But, as detailed in the book’s most fascinating sections, he still managed to win over 60 screen assignments between 1954 and 1960, two of which, Roman Holiday and The Brave One, won Academy Awards. Ceplair resists other writers’ tendencies to either lionize Trumbo as a martyr or criticize him as a hypocrite, finally humanizing a celebrity often reduced to a one-dimensional icon of his era. 75 b&w photos. (Jan.)
A good and surprising biography... Ceplair soars.
This book can't help being continually fascinating because of its subject matter and his epic skill for armed literary combat.
Ceplair and Trumbo's book is an exhaustive and precisely documented study of the work—cinematic, literary and political—of the screenwriter and Hollywood Ten member. It is an outstanding treatment of Trumbo's political struggle and of the obstacles he faced.
This is a splendid book, a major accomplishment in the field of American film history and the history of the Left within popular culture. Ceplair and Trumbo examine a major victim of the Hollywood blacklist, with a depth and insight, not to mention exhaustive research, that is unprecedented in biography or autobiography.
Similar to Hollywood, Dalton Trumbo was more than one dimensional and reflects the complexity of American radicalism.
Dalton Trumbo: Blacklisted Hollywood Radical provides nearly everything you'd ever want to know about Trumbo as a person and screenwriter, as well as biting analysis on his time leading up to his arrest and imprisonment by HUAC, and how he shattered it.
01/01/2015
Blacklisted screenwriter Dalton Trumbo (1905–76) is given due credit in this extensive if somewhat bloated biography coauthored by Ceplair (The Marxist and the Movies) and Trumbo's son, the late writer Christopher Trumbo (Trumbo: Red, White, and Blacklisted). Spanning from his early years in Grand Junction, CO, to his decline and death in Los Angeles in the mid-1970s, this book tells Trumbo's story as a series of largely self-perpetuated conflicts, culminating with his incarceration and 13-year blacklisting as a member of the infamous "Hollywood Ten." As biographers, Ceplair and Trumbo seek to provide a balanced portrait of the latter's father as an ambitious and prolific author—his successes with the novel Johnny Got His Gun and screenplays including Spartacus and The Brave One—and as an unapologetically political individual—his frequent and passionate defenses of liberty, which led to his affiliation with the Communist Party in the 1940s. The result is an impressive work that triumphs through sheer force of research in moving Trumbo's reputation beyond both his screenplay accomplishments and his political infamy, yet that still seems curiously unsure of who Trumbo was on his own. VERDICT Recommended for readers with strong interests in screenwriting, the entertainment industry, or the Hollywood Blacklist.—Robin Chin Roemer, Univ. of Washington Lib., Seattle
